Catarina

“And then,” I say after draining my wineglass, “Mia told me that she appreciated my professionalism.”

“Her way of telling you that she wasn’t reassigning you,” North says, reaching for the bottle. I hold out my glass and he refills it.

“Precisely. What am I supposed to do?”

“Much as I can’t condone you even pretending to date Barrett Fox, bad boy of the NFL,” North adds, “Mia is right. You are a professional and you’ll find a way through this. In the meantime, don’t let him rile you. He’s a child. This is his game.”

North straightens the cuff of his sleeve under his suit jacket and scrapes his keys off my kitchen counter.

“You’re leaving? You just got here.”

“I have a late showing, Catarina. I told you this.”

“No, you didn’t,” I say, a tad petulantly. Either I have early onset Alzheimer’s or he didn’t tell me. This is the third time in two weeks he’s had a late appointment that I didn’t recall knowing about. “When will you be done?”

“Late. The apartment building is across town and the buyers flew in from Japan. I’m going to have to do the whole take-them-out-for-drinks-and-kiss-their-asses bit. You know how I hate that.”

North is dressed in a pristine suit and smells extra manly and good. I inhale a deep breath as he leans in and presses a kiss to my cheek.

“I like that new cologne,” I murmur, tracking my fingers down his shirt buttons.

“Not now, Catarina.”

I drop my arm with a huff. North and I have been dating for six months now. I didn’t expect the sex to drop off a steep cliff five months in, but it did. Lately, we see each other less and less, which is putting a chink in my perfectionist armor. Our relationship should be stronger, especially this early on.

Now’s not the time to bring it up. Maybe I’ll dig up some of my former articles as talking points. North does better when he’s on task for a conversation.

“See you tomorrow,” I tell him as he shuts the door with a soft click. I sigh into my wineglass, thinking again how it shouldn’t be this hard for a relationship columnist to have a relationship.

---

The next day at work I search through some of my former articles. “How to Lure Him In Using Your Brain.” Oh, that was a good one. It doesn’t apply to North and me though. He fell for my brain first and foremost.

Oh, here’s one. “The Seven Month Itch: How to Survive Your First Year of Dating.” I contemplate a moment before printing it. I’ve had other relationships that have bypassed the seven-month point. Maybe there’ll be some insight in there I’ve since forgotten. The printer at my desk whirs to life as I come across another one I wrote two years ago that, frankly, I forgot about. “How to Tell If He’s Cheating.”

My finger is hovering over the trackpad on my laptop, the pointer positioned over the x. I should close the search window. There’s no way North would cheat on me any more than I would cheat on him. In the same manner I told him about Barrett and this ludicrous situation, North would tell me first if he had even a stir of interest in someone else. We agreed to that stipulation when we started dating. It was only logical to break up if interest lagged.

I think about our current sex rut and bite my lip. I hate uncertainty.

Rather than click the x, I scroll through the article, skimming my own bold, bullet-pointed advice.

Well. North doesn’t believe in saying “I love you,” so I can throw that one out. I scroll to the next bold header.

Embarrassing, but nonetheless true. I scroll to the next one.

This one, I read.

You remember when you were first together. The blush of first romance, the way he couldn’t take his eyes off you. Now even when you’re in the same room he’s checking his phone for incoming texts and you’re flipping through a magazine or your tablet—maybe you’re perusing this article. He’s not working late. He’s cheating. And those texts he’s waiting for are probably from the woman he’s cheating on you with.

“Ouch. A cheater.” A low voice rumbles in my ear.

I slam the lid of my laptop shut and whirl around, coming face to face with Barrett Fox.

“What are you doing sneaking up on me?” My voice is a little crazed. The printer stops spitting papers and I make a show of pulling them from the tray and stapling them together.

“You’re not the only one quiet on your feet, Kitty Cat.”

I call up North’s advice to not let Barrett rile me. It’s smart. I don’t have to react to everything he does. I don’t have to let him under my skin. He can’t burrow under there without my permission.

I stand from my chair and Barrett straightens from his bend to stand with me. He’s tall—six-one, I’d guess. North is six-five, so I’m used to looking way, way up. At five-seven and wearing four-inch heels, I stand nearly eye to eye with the former defensive lineman.

“I always had a chick willing to cheer me up when I split with my girlfriend, but I was never a cheater,” Barrett says. He makes a tsk sound out of the corner of his mouth. “Shame if that’s what your boyfriend’s doing.”

“He’s not doing that. He’s not doing anything.”

“Which is one of the signs. I was reading over your shoulder and spotted the no-sex thing. Is that going on? Did he stop slipping it to you?”

My blood isn’t quite boiling but it’s definitely on simmer. Don’t let him get to you. I affect a neutral expression for Barrett’s sake, and for mine, too. I have to spend the next month-plus with him, but I don’t have to let him dictate my mood.

“It’s astounding you have any chicks willing to cheer you up given your inability to speak to a woman with a modicum of respect. Is it that difficult for you to choose your words, Mr. Fox?” I add coolly. “If so, this is the wrong business for you.”

A shadow stretches over those blue, blue eyes, so brief I wonder if I imagined it. His cocky smile snaps into place like it never left and then I’m sure I did imagine it. Like Barrett Fox has a deep well of emotion under that paper-thin exterior? Yeah, right.

He leans close, and then closer. “I asked out of concern for you and me and our dating assignment. I’ve never gone on a date with a woman that didn’t end with her hands all over me.”

North’s cologne smells good, but somehow Barrett’s musky, clean-man scent smells better. I blink out of the stupid thought and retort with, “You mean to slap you in the face? That can be arranged.”

I sit at my desk again, opening my laptop and reminding myself that it doesn’t matter if Fox stood over my shoulder and read every word of this article. I wasn’t letting him get to me.

He doesn’t linger, laughing as he swaggers past my desk to his, which happens to be next to a window. Two tall cubicle walls block him from the rest of the office, but lucky me, I can see him as plain as day. When he sits in his desk chair and blows me a kiss, no one but me is the wiser.

I roll my eyes and return to the article, scrolling down to the next header about cheating boyfriends.

One of those isn’t cause for alarm, but if your guy is going out of his way to smell great, look fantastic, and step up his manscaping game, look out. Usually that means there’s another hen pecking around where she shouldn’t be…

Damn. I shake my head and close the article without printing it. No. No way am I letting this idea take root and bloom into an accusation I’ll later regret. North is selling an apartment building to Japanese businessmen. Period. He doesn’t have time for another woman. And if our sex life is lacking, I have myself to blame. I’ve been working longer hours over the last month. Plus, we were in a rut before that month. A boring sex rut. It went from hot and fun when we met to predictable and routine within a few months. If I’m not keeping things spicy enough, I can step up my game.

I search through my documents and find what I should have been looking for in the first place. An article I wrote last summer when I’d met North, but we hadn’t started dating yet.

“Summer Sizzle! Keeping It Hot In the Bedroom.”

I click PRINT after a perfunctory glance to make sure Barrett is still at his desk.

He is. Hunkered over his own laptop, a look of deep concentration on his face. We’re supposed to be coming up with lists of dating ideas—him half and me the other half. How much do you want to bet he’s looking at porn?

With a smug smile, I watch my printer spit out papers.

“Your mood’s improved,” Mia says from behind me.

“I’m making everyone here wear bells around their necks from now on,” I announce, tucking the articles into a manila folder to avoid more awkward questions. “Also, I’d like a few more cubicle walls. I feel very exposed.”

“You requested no walls in the first place, darling.” Mia gives me a slow blink.

She’s right.

“Here’s an idea for one of your dates with Barrett.” She hands me a glossy, folded brochure.

“Art in the Park.” I slide her a disbelieving look. “I highly doubt that a Neanderthal would appreciate art or a park let alone the two of them together.”

“Good.” She pulls a smile. “The less compatible these dates are, the better. It’ll add to the allure. Everyone will be hanging on your every word—and his—about how my star reporter and the bad boy of the NFL are figuring out their relationship. Their fictional relationship, of course.”

“Mia…”

“Don’t give me that tone. I let you write an entire article on farm animals in a local sanctuary despite the fact it had nothing to do with your column.”

“I like pigs. And not for dinner,” I say, my voice small. “It was a passion project.”

“I know, dear.” Mia gives me a rough pat on the arm. “This is your new passion project.” She sends a pointed look over her glasses to Barrett. “He’s as yummy as they come. If I were twenty years younger and had your tight little body, I’d be all over that.”

“I have a boyfriend,” I remind her. She acknowledges that statement with a grunt. “You can’t expect me to pretend to date someone when I’m already for-real dating someone.”

“Someone as exciting as crepe paper.”

“Hey!”

“Don’t ‘hey!’ me. The relationship section of the Chat is your baby, Catarina. When I let you run it, you agreed to keep it alive and kicking. Barrett Fox adds both life and kicking.”

“Oh, trust me.” I give her a blithe smile. “I’m tempted to kick him.”

“Perfect. Conflict makes for great stories.” She shrugs. “If you don’t like Art in the Park find something else. The more local festivities that are in public, the better. We want buzz surrounding these articles. We want lots of online subscribers sharing them on Facebook. We want ad banners for KY Yours & Mine lube.”

Okay, that was a little loud.

Barrett lifts his head from his laptop and Mia waves.

I snarl.

He blows me a kiss.

Dammit, Mia.